World of Warcraft Two-Handed Questing Sword (Fan Art)

This was a fun little personal project I completed recently, something I don’t have a lot of time for these days, unfortunately. I really miss doing hand painted game art and wanted to get back into it, and what better source to choose from than the pinnacle of hand painted games, World of Warcraft!

I’ve always wanted to work at a studio like Blizzard, because I absolutely LOVE the stylized art they create for many of their games, and I just so happened to come across some great concept art via Blizzard’s recent Art Blast on ArtStation for the release of The War Within expansion. This cool little questing sword created by the talented Alyssa Herman (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/wrJ4QX) caught my eye, partly because I felt it was fairly simple compared to other things I could try to create, given the limited free time I have.

The original concept only had a side view, so I sketched out a quick thumbnail of how I figured the finger guard would look, then got to work! I blocked out the mesh in Maya, then brought that into Zbrush to sculpt in the details, such as cracks, dings and uneven edging. I then baked that in Painter and used it for some base AO as well as getting some nice baked lighting. After that, I got to work painting all the fun details!

I had a blast with this, and I hope to keep doing more. Maybe I’ll even concept some original stuff based on WoW and create that, too. I look forward to seeing what you all think!